Today, Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 443, one of the most important reforms for civil forfeiture in recent years. Under civil forfeiture, police can seize and keep property without a criminal conviction, or even filing criminal charges. The new law is aimed at closing a loophole that allowed law enforcement to evade state protections.

When compared to most other states, California’s forfeiture laws provide relatively better protections to property owners. California state law has long required a criminal conviction before real estate, vehicles, boats and cash under $25,000 could be forfeited to the government. To forfeit cash above the $25,000 threshold, the government must establish clear and convincing evidence. Furthermore, when an innocent person with an interest in the property seeks to protect that interest, the burden is on the government to show that the owner knew about the property’s illegal use.

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But those requirements are lacking under federal law. Through a federal forfeiture program called “equitable sharing,” state and local law enforcement agencies may collaborate with a federal agency, like the DEA or ICE, and forfeit seized property under federal law, even if that would circumvent California’s more stringent protections for property owners. Moreover, if a property is forfeited federally, participating agencies may receive up to 80 percent of the proceeds—higher than what California law grants to law enforcement.

But starting next year, agencies will first need to obtain any criminal conviction before they could receive equitable-sharing payments from forfeited real estate, vehicles, boats and cash valued at under $40,000. In addition, SB 443 increases the threshold for forfeiting cash with a criminal conviction under state law to $40,000.

Evading safeguards for civil liberties, law enforcement agencies have routinely exploited the equitable-sharing loophole. A blockbuster investigation by The Washington Post in 2014 identified nearly 10,000 cash seizures in California, conducted “without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program,” since 9/11.

Analysis by the Institute for Justice found that half of all properties forfeited under equitable sharing were valued at less than $8,920—hardly the proceeds of kingpins. Moreover, in 2013, 77.5 percent of all cash seized for equitable sharing was valued at under $40,000.